What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Design Architect position at Microsoft AI?
Overview
About Microsoft AI (MAI)
Microsoft AI (MAI) is a newly formed organization advancing Copilot and other consumer AI products. We partner across Bing, Edge, MSN, and Shopping to shape the future of AI powered personal computing. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We innovate with a growth mindset, build on respect, integrity, and accountability, and foster a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive.
The MAI Brand and Design Systems team is building a cohesive, AI native design system that unifies Microsoft products across desktop, web, and mobile—creating fast, scalable, and intuitive experiences for our customers.
Why Join Us?
As a Principal Design Architect (also known as a Creative Technologist), you’ll be a high level individual contributor working at the intersection of design systems, engineering, and AI tooling. You’ll define how Microsoft’s design system evolves in the AI era—building adaptive, intelligent systems that accelerate designer and developer workflows.
Your work spans intelligent tools, design to code automation, and AI augmented processes that boost velocity and quality at scale. This isn’t just about UI design; it’s about shaping AI behavior and how people collaborate with machine intelligence.
You Will
Required Qualifications
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
About Microsoft AI (MAI)
Microsoft AI (MAI) is a newly formed organization advancing Copilot and other consumer AI products. We partner across Bing, Edge, MSN, and Shopping to shape the future of AI powered personal computing. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We innovate with a growth mindset, build on respect, integrity, and accountability, and foster a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive.
The MAI Brand and Design Systems team is building a cohesive, AI native design system that unifies Microsoft products across desktop, web, and mobile—creating fast, scalable, and intuitive experiences for our customers.
Why Join Us?
- Shape the future of consumer AI experiences
- Collaborate with teams worldwide
- Advance intuitive, inclusive, trustworthy AI
- Work in a culture that encourages creativity and rapid experimentation
As a Principal Design Architect (also known as a Creative Technologist), you’ll be a high level individual contributor working at the intersection of design systems, engineering, and AI tooling. You’ll define how Microsoft’s design system evolves in the AI era—building adaptive, intelligent systems that accelerate designer and developer workflows.
Your work spans intelligent tools, design to code automation, and AI augmented processes that boost velocity and quality at scale. This isn’t just about UI design; it’s about shaping AI behavior and how people collaborate with machine intelligence.
You Will
- Continue to explore emerging AI techniques—prompting, prototyping, and experimentation
- Build hands on prototypes that advance design ideas
- Partner with engineering and data science to influence systems, model requirements, and AI behaviors
- Drive strategic decisions that shape longterm AI experience patterns
- Work simultaneously on present execution and 6–12 month future vision
- Elevate team fluency through coaching, frameworks, and cross disciplinary collaboration
- Bring an AI forward mindset; evaluate system behavior and define quality for complex scenarios
- Blend design craft with technical curiosity, working beyond pixels using real data and prototypes
- Influence across PM, Engineering, Data Science, Research, and Design
- Provide strategic design vision and business rationale
- Build AI powered tools and pipelines that move concepts to production quickly
- Embed advanced AI capabilities into the design system for adaptability and workflow integration
- Prototype intelligent components and adaptive UI patterns
- Operationalize LLMs, generative UI, and multimodal systems into practical workflows
- Ensure seamless design system to code integration using AI driven utilities
- Act as a force multiplier—accelerating cycles, scaling quality, and shaping AI augmented design
Required Qualifications
- Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 6 years experience working in product or service design
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience, Interaction Design, or related field AND 8 years experience working in product or service design
- OR equivalent experience (e.g., demonstrated experience working in product or service design or using design thinking to solve problems)
- Experience with LLMs, generative UI, and broader AI/ML technologies
- Experience designing AI/LLM- powered experiences; familiarity with conversational and voice systems
- Strong foundation in design systems and frontend engineering
- Ability to prototype and ship intelligent design to code workflows
- Proficiency in Figma and AI prototyping tools; experience with design automation and component libraries
- Portfolio demonstrating strong visual design craft
- Ability to thrive in fastpaced, evolving environments
- Strong communication and storytelling skills
- Collaborative mindset across design, engineering, and research
- Experience influencing technical decisions and strategic design direction
- Experience shipping products, services, or games end-to-end
- Portfolio including AI behavior, model shaping, orchestration, or agent based prototypes
- Experience with agents, tool integration, or evaluation frameworks
- Comfort with ambiguity in AI systems, including uncertainty and fallbacks
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
Salary : $139,900 - $274,800